


After-comers Cannot Guess the Beauty Been

by R00bs_Teacup



Series: airy cages [2]
Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Multi, Oxford, Romance, location porn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-30
Updated: 2016-11-30
Packaged: 2018-09-03 10:20:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8708716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/R00bs_Teacup/pseuds/R00bs_Teacup
Summary: another bit in the same universe as Airy Cages. Meandering, yearning, Oxford and Morse. I have NO idea how to summarize this.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lucyemers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lucyemers/gifts).



> for a timestamp meme on Tumblr:
> 
> Choose any one of my fics (or from prompts on here)  
> Request a scene/moment set in that same universe as that fic. The scene can take place before/during/after the fic.   
> I will write at least a hundred words to fill your request
> 
> Which I am totally up for still doing, just ask on Tumblr (apricotserrant.tumblr.com) or LJ (azile-teacup.livejournal.com)

And this is Oxford, too. Wind-swept, paths thick with wet leaves, so cold the grass is white-tipped with frost. Morse remembers standing up here when he was young. It doesn’t feel so different now, though he looks different- white haired, old. Younger, still, always, than Fred and Win. Less and less of a blessing, that. This earth is his, too. Freer than the old stone of the center, here he can breathe. There’s a mist up from the river, but he can make out those old stones, the spires and spindly cranes. Like a drowned city, and when the bells come they come muffled as if by encroaching waves. Morse closes his eyes and lets it all get washed away. 

 

“Sir, the lad’s agreed to talk to you,” Lewis says softly, coming up. “He’s right scared, though, and he’s a youngun.”

 

“Old enough to break the law,” Morse points out, without much rancour. The boy does look young- thin and gangly and huddled in Lewis’s jacket, he looks all of eight. Lewis has already reported his age as twelve. “Right.”

 

Morse looks over the city again, down South Parks to St Clements and on to the centre, and out to Boar’s Hill, the landscape his. He turns to the huddle of trees that shelter the huddle of a boy, and crouches, knees creaking and cracking. Fred calls him Popcorn. Morse feels like the city has aged with him, becoming thin and weary, and the whole park creaks with bending to this fragile scrap of humanity, caught as if by the wind. 

 

“Alright, then. What happened, Alex?” Morse asks, lowering and warming his voice, finding the tone Lewis uses with his children. 

 

“What about when I talk to Sam? Aren’t I soft and warm?” Fred asks, later, when Morse tells them about it. 

 

He’s trying to tell them about the park, the thinness of everything, the cracks. Fred’s interested in the case, though, and Win’s wanting to knit something warm for the boy. Morse assures Win that Lewis got Alex a hot dinner and took him home to his Dad, and he tells Fred the outline of the case, and then he sits back with his whiskey and shuts his eyes. Fred’ll be asleep in a minute, anyway. He hardly keeps awake long, these days. They’ve still got the house, at least. Still in the same little house in Cowley, near enough for Morse to walk to the river, to get up to Port Meadow, the way they used to. The whole day walking, shoulder to shoulder, the beat of the city beneath their feet. 

 

“The bells are muffled,” Morse says, quietly. 

 

At night, Oxford quiets. The bars let out, the clubs let out, Cowley road grows chaotic and choked with people, but somehow still there is stillness and silence. Great empty spaces. In the cold of late night the stones tower in chill reticence, and the street creaks with ice. They’re walking slowly on Hollywell Street, to the Music Rooms, Fred on Morse’s arm, Win a step ahead. Morse can’t hear anything, except Fred’s breath, Win’s stick, his own beating heart. He looks up, though, and Broad Street is dimly lit, street lights fighting the fog, the Bodleian a familiar pale shadow. Libraries are never silent. Morse stops, breath catching, and the city opens to him, suddenly loud even in the cold. It’s the orchestra tuning up, he realises, and they’re late. He laughs. 

 

There always was an ache, in Oxford. The cold bones in winter remind Morse of his mortality, of their mortality. The city empties after Christmas passes and the bones are stark, bare, there is nowhere to hide from the invasion of the city’s cold. The city is old, though. Ancient, even. She wears her age like Win does, as if it is a privilege, each moment on show as joy and sorrow and living. So much living, and so much beauty in that. Like the swift flush of an opera when the music outgrows the emotion and the emotion outgrows the music and it just bursts from its scaffold. The city bursts from her bones, her voice quieted but still there. Even in creaks. 

 

“Am I not beautiful too?” Fred asks, amused. 

 

“You are,” Morse says, sprawled in the chair next to Fred’s bed. “I lost the city’s heart, could only hear my own. But here it is.”

 

He pats Fred’s chest, and Fred goes quiet, then holds Morse’s hand, and falls asleep. The heart of the great city. Because it is the heart, wherever it might rest for others it is here for Morse. The beat and throb of life, of love, that animates the city and gives her voice clarity. A voice to raise and sing and weep with. To love with. Because who can love in silence? 


End file.
